Jay Adedon on AI built on stolen work and mental health risks
Adedon, a freelance creative professional and parent, urges a moratorium on predatory LLMs, noting they are built on stolen work of writers and artists. They cite APA health warnings about adolescents and AI, documentation of chatbots inducing psychosis in adults and driving children to suicide, and argue AI will stunt critical growth for thousands of students.
Okay, thank you, and thank you, by the way, for getting my name right.
That's a rare and exciting occurrence.
My name is Jay Adedon.
I'm a freelance creative professional and the parent of a New York City student, and I'm speaking here today to urge you to adopt a moratorium on the use of predatory LLMs, better known as AI, in New York City schools.
So the case against AI schools is really substantial, so much that I can't fit into two minutes, so I'm going to sort of focus down on something that people haven't brought up so far.
Specifically, that the largest large language models are built using the stolen work of thousands upon thousands of writers and artists.
And especially in a city where so many of us make our homes, the adoption of technology built on our non-consensual, uncompensated labor and intellectual property is at best an insult.
But there's a bigger problem attached to it, which is the fact that adopting that technology into schools means trusting those same predatory companies.
Who stole all that information and all that work unapologetically with our children's sensitive data.
We know that AI also undercuts children's social and emotional development, and I want to talk in particular about its impact on adolescents, because they're the age group targeted commercially and in our schools with the highest concentration of AI.
And it's bad.
It's bad to the point that the APA has
has issued a health warning about adolescents and AI.
And that in itself isn't much of a surprise, given that we've seen documentation in the last year that chatbots are capable of inducing psychosis in previously healthy adults and have driven multiple children to suicide.
My kid isn't an adolescent, so she's just about to start pre-K, where tech magnets are already pushing an increasing use of AI.
As you mentioned, kids as young as four are getting devices to take home.
And as a parent, I want my kid to actually learn at school, not just facts, but to think and reason for herself, to solve problems and to grow as a human being.
And introducing AI, as it now exists in New York City classrooms, will stunt that same critical growth for my kid and for thousands of others.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you so much for your testimony.